<blockquote>"Then why don't you stop shirriffing?" Sam says to me, and so I did, though it's easier in the telling than it is in the doing. I shouldn't have needed another body telling me what's up and what's down in the Shire, right you are. But you take one small step after another, till you wake up one Wintring morn in a damp Shirriff-house with your back stiff and your head bleared, and it's not the life you used to know no more. That's how it went with me and most other lads in our troop, none of us meaning no harm. But all this while we stuck to muttering amongst ourselves about lack of ale and vittles and such, instead of looking where the real damage lay. It didn't fit in our heads that our duties might be aught else than what we'd been learned to do as our job.</blockquote>
